Tag Archives: animals

ever since i wrote about “hunting gear” a couple years ago, i’ve been on this kick that i really want to hunt except for: a) i don’t want to actually kill an animal or b) shoot a gun.

shooting a big furry animal? one that’s cute? (and let’s face it: they’re all cute. even the ones that want to eat your face.) i just couldn’t do it. i’ve also learned that when hunting, you need to drag the dead animal back to your car, then at some point, gut it. which, no. please, i can barely make a meatloaf!

i also don’t like shooting guns, because they’re a) loud b) dangerous and c) have kickback. and i try to avoid all loud, dangerous things, especially those that might wind up tossing my body like a beanbag. (hah, that was a funny visual.)

so i guess what i actually want to do is wear cool hunting clothes while hiding out in the woods looking at animals.

is there a name for this activity? because it’s definitely not hunting.

i think what might be a good solution is to take a moderately short hike in camo and hunting-appropriate boots, stop in the prettiest spot, and watch animals in their natural habitat while i picnic on a variety of forest-appropriate snacks, including but not limited to fresh fruit, sheep or goat’s milk cheese, and/or a selection of meats that don’t need to be heated. and pumpkin seeds. oh, and tea, from, like, a stainless steel thermos that keeps it really really hot for hours, because, really, who knows how long i’ll be out there? OH AND CHOCOLATE. DARK CHOCOLATE. mmmm.

other items to pack:
-a blanket
-matches (in case i need to make a fire, which, how do you make a fire? whatever, i’ll figure it out.)
-a tent (in case it rains)
-one of those wind-up lights that’s also a radio and a cell phone charger
-S.O.S. flares (in case of emergency)
-bear spray
-a knife (don’t ask; this just feels like something i should have)
-first aid kit

ok, i guess what actually want to do is to go camping, in which case i’m going to need one of those portable camping stoves. and some kind of stove top coffee pot. breakfast foods. canned beans. things like that. OH WAIT: BUG SPRAY. but without chemicals. natural bug spray.

this is turning into kind of an ordeal. maybe i should just go fishing. except i don’t want to bait the hook or touch any fish. so i guess what i actually want to do is sit in a boat or stand on a pier all day, catch and reel in a fish, and basically make someone else do all the gross stuff. (note: i have actually found someone to do this for me!)

so yeah. that’s actually all i wanted to tell you. how’s your summer been? mine’s been a little on the crappy side (hence not posting much). HOWEVER (however!) i’m thrilled to tell you that I HAVE COMPLETED MY E-BOOK, “THAT’S NOT A KITTEN, IT’S A RAT,” AND IT WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF $2.99.

the gist of this e-book is that it’s actually a mini e-book (hence the reasonable price), designed to be read in one hour or less. it contains lots of what i call dvd extras for regular readers (like how i unknowingly peed my pants in kindergarten while listening to phonics records in my elementary school library) but also tries to reel people in that haven’t made it to this blog yet with tales of eddie the rat and the bottomless abyss that is my bag.

BONUS: if you’re somewhat local i am willing to come to your book club (yes! your book club!) to answer questions, or, you know, just to eat your food and talk trash with you and your friends. i will also bring HOLLY, whom, as you all know, is the real hero of this blog in that she is endlessly patient with me as i talk/complain about her and spill our business on the internet. (LOVE YOU, HONEY!)

trust me, i will let you all know the moment it’s available for download. in the meantime, does anyone want to sit and watch animals in the woods with me? make sure you wear camo. i’ll bring the forest snacks and the bear spray.

*this post is dedicated to my sister-in-law heather who hasn’t been feeling well lately and could sure as hell use a good laugh.

my sister-in-law heather–the very same one i’m writing this post for–lives on a friggin hillside in washington, PA. don’t ask me why but she does. i swear every time we drive up her driveway i almost have a heart attack. it’s that steep. after we park, i ask holly if we have the emergency brake on so many times she gets this close to elbowing me in the mouth. yeah every trip to heather’s starts off really well.

washington, PA is a unique place in that every single person in western pennsylvania actually calls it “washington, pee-ay” as not to confuse it with our nation’s capitol–what, with all the cows grazing all over the place, i can see how that’d be really confusing–or washington state, which is about 4,000 miles away on the west coast practically in canada.

over the weekend, on sunday, holly and i drove to washington, pee-ay to meet her family at a mud pit and deep-fried food festival disguised as a christmas arts & crafts fair. after eating a late lunch at the washington, pee-ay reb robin (reeeeeed robin. yuuummmmm. sorry, every time i think about red robin i have to sing their jingle), holly went with her mom, twin sister, niece and nephew to some outlets. since i kind of hate shopping (that’s my gay gene rearing its boat-shoe-and-chino-wearing head), i said i’d rather go to heather’s to hang with holly’s gram, who was going back to heather’s, too, and who is fabulous.

holly politely asked me to drive our car back to heather’s. i snapped at her that i didn’t want to b/c the country roads are too damn windy and i’d get lost and maybe even have a panic attack following her sister to the house and i didn’t know where my xanax was. (total lie. i’ve kept it in my bag ever since i flew to san fran for nicole‘s wedding. i know exactly where the hell it is.)

c’mon, babe, she said, her impatience growing. it’s only like five minutes away. that way i can go in the car with my mom.

i said no until holly was good and pissed and then i said yes. i do that a lot even tho i shouldn’t.

i managed to follow heather and her gram back to the house on the windy roads without having a panic attack. we got up to the house and i was like oh beejesus, the driveway. i had totally forgotten about the damn driveway.

well here we go, i thought as i gunned our pearlescent white rav-4 up the hill. (yes it really is pearlescent white.) tho it kind of looked like a rolling turd considering how much craft fair mud was on it.

there were all these damn cars in the driveway so i had to park on the grass. i chose a bad place to park. at that moment i didn’t realize just how bad it was, but from the outset i knew it wasn’t a good idea but i didn’t know what else to do. i felt like the car was going to roll over and tumble down the hill. i rolled down the window and asked her husband if it was an ok place to park. he told me to watch out for the dog shit, which i assumed meant the car wouldn’t flip.

whatevs, i thought. i can a handle a little dog poop. hell, i live in southeast baltimore. home of loose pit bulls that crap in the middle of the sidewalk.

i got out of the car, careful not to let the gravity of the hillside slam the car door on me. (note: this has happened before. it’s not pretty.) i got out to look at the car and see about this dog poop.

i should note that they have a great dane. her name is lena and she is enormous. i love her deeply but she scares the hell out of me. we’re basically scared of each other. i walk in the house and she runs from me. and when she comes near me i run from her. it’s like a game except we’re both scared for our lives.

anyway, her poop was so big it literally took my breath away. i’d never seen dog poop that big in my life. kind of hard to miss, i thought. not gonna step in that. no way no how. i am totally in the clear. you’d have to be a major idiot not to see that.

i walked back around to the other side of the car to help gram up the hill. and then it happened. i put my left foot down and slipped. it happened so damn quickly it was like i stepped on a banana peel. it was like a cartoon.

whoooaaaaaaaa, i said, feeling like it was happening in slow motion. i had to grab heather’s arm to stop myself from tumbling down the hill and in the process almost took down heather, her baby and her grandma.

“that is some serious mu-,” i said, turning around to look at the mud i surely had stepped in.

there was massive streak of great dane poop about two feet long leading from where i was standing at that moment straight back to the car. and it was deep.

a shiver went down my spine and then i got goosebumps. i was trying very hard a) not to gag and b) not to curse as there was an impressionable baby in front of me, not to mention holly’s 82-year-old grandma who doesn’t know what a cursing sicko i am.

instead of bursting into a tourette’s-like stream of swearing, i shook off my nausea and let out a very unsatisfying “oh man.” it was very hard to hold in all that cursing and i think i injured myself in the process.

i wiped my shoe off in the grass but i don’t even know if i got it all off. nearly a week later, there’s still something on my left boot. it could be craft fair mud, i’m not even sure.

i’m trying to figure out how to end this story. i feel like there should be a moral. i guess the moral of the damn story is that it’s easy to step in dog poop, even when it’s so big it’s basically visible from space. don’t think it won’t happen to you.

heather, i hope you enjoyed this story and that it made you feel better. i’d put in a smile “emoticon” here but the damn blogging software i’m using will turn it into a cartoon smiley and then this looks like a ‘tween blog. i love you and i still love lena even tho she’s the size of a small horse and her poop is huge and i stepped in it and almost fell down a hill and when i see her i want to suck my thumb while rocking back and forth in the corner.

for Lunch at 11:30 to win, you have to VOTE for it! every day! (yes, you really can vote everyday!) so click on the icon below, register (it takes like 10 seconds to register) and then choose Lunch at 11:30 for both “Best Lifestyle Blog” and “Best Personal Blog.” then write it in for “Best Overall Blog.” xxo!

yesterday, sunday, holly rolled up her sleeves, put on disposable gloves and started a project we’ve both been dreading: replacing our dryer vent. honestly, i don’t know why i’ve been dreading it, as i had absolutely no intention of helping her. i guess mostly i was scared of what she’d find.

i’m not gonna sugarcoat it for ya, folks. we were about 99.9% sure there was a rat living in our dryer vent. we suspected it b/c we heard loud noises from the dryer area downstairs. and then–and this part’s gross, so if you’re eating something, you might want to come back and read this later–when we turned the dryer on, we heard things rattling. we decided, with disgust, that what we were hearing was actually rat turds, and that we’d better get on the whole dryer vent situation before things got worse.

(if you’re wondering what rat turds in your dryer vent sound like, imagine one of those annoying “rain sticks” from the 90s, except turds, not pebbles, and in a dryer vent, not a pretty stick.)

also, when i said “we’d better get on this whole dryer vent situation” i actually meant holly. i would be supervising from the other end of the house, by the front door, specifically, so i wouldn’t actually have to see what was going to come out of the dryer vent [i.e. petrified rat (holly found a photo of a petrified rat on the internet, really upsetting), an abundance of rat turds, a live rat and the like].

i have to say that we’ve dealt with some pretty disgusting stuff since we moved into our southeast baltimore rowhouse. (note: when we bought the house in 2006 it was a bona fide boarded-up drughouse. bloodstains on the carpet, needles in the sink, the whole nine yards. we hired guys to gut it down to the 100-year-old bricks and joists and then rebuild it, from holly’s design, from the inside out. we did it in just seven months and moved in, literally, before the dust settled. important note: wait for the dust to settle before you move someplace. that expression exists for a reason.)

we’ve battled mice. (oh my gosh so many mice.) and then we had that whole situation next door. and yes, a rat actually got inside our house (behind our stairs, thru the old man’s vacant house) in nov/dec, which is basically why i went silent for a little while, in case you were wondering, as i was battling a severe rat-induced stress disorder and was either hiding upstairs in my office with the door closed all day, with holly at school (pretending to be a college student at one or more college snack shops) or out at panera drinking copious amounts of hot tea avoiding the rat, which we named eddie. he was a damn smart rat, too. (i won’t get into that here. you’ll have to buy the book i’m inevitably going to write about it to find out more.)

to lighten the mood in our home, which, of course, was actually being run by eddie, i made up a rat rap:

whatever. it was funny at the time. (hey, you try coping with a home rat takeover, during daylight hours, no less. trust me, a rat rap helps.) there’s been more gross stuff, but i think i’ll stop at the mice, rat and corpse next door.

what i’m trying to say here is that not that much gets to us at this point. but i’ll tellya what: what holly found in the dryer vent actually upset us.

here’s what she found:

chicken bones
turds
and…a crab leg.

a crab leg?!! only in baltimore, folks. only in this town will rats bring crab legs into the dryer vent they’re living in. it was terrible, and i had no business looking but i did anyway. mostly b/c holly said, “BABE LOOK WHAT I FOUND!”

anyway, i wanted to tell holly to wear a mask, but i had a headache and couldn’t get the words out. now she has a fever of 101, and she’s convinced she has “rat fever” from breathing in “rat dust.” personally, i think she has a cold.

i told her i wouldn’t google “rat fever” like she wanted me to, but i did. (googling medical conditions: always a bad idea.) i learned that technically, even though she wasn’t bitten by a rat (i.e. “rat bite fever”), there’s a small chance she contracted an infection by breathing in “rat dust,” but the chances are slim unless we live in west africa, which we don’t.

in conclusion, i don’t think she’s all that sick considering she’s telling me right now to tell all of you that we have solved the “varmint” problem (i love when she calls them “varmints”) by sealing up all holes and cracks in our house, both inside and out. (it’s true; we haven’t seen a single mouse in a while and eddie’s definitely gone) so don’t be scared to come over. if you want to. which you probably don’t. but you should b/c holly’s a really good cook even tho she has a fever right now. oh hell, forget it. next i bet you’ll tell us you don’t want us to dry your clothes. sissies.

don't fall for it! it is STILL a mouse. i know it's in an orange but it will bite you!

when i was a little kid–i think i may have been in second grade–i did my homework over the weekend and then promptly lost it. i noticed this sunday night, the most dreaded night of school-aged children, and proceeded to have a mini meltdown.

“i don’t want to tell my teacher i lost my homework!” i told my parents, completely panic-stricken that i was going to get in what us kids called “big trouble.”

“tell your teacher you misplaced it,” they told me calmly.

misplaced, i thought. wow. that sounded so much better. yes, that would work, i decided. i would tell the teacher–actually, i think it was a student teacher–that i misplaced my homework. it was much more mature and refined. i once knew where it was, but now i didn’t. which meant that i misplaced it and did not lose it like the irresponsible second grader that i was.

i took a deep breath, dislodged my wedgie, and told the student teacher that i had “misplaced” my homework over the weekend. i swear to this day i think i saw her try to hold back a smile. thinking back on it, i’m surprised she didn’t let out a laugh, too. what second grader comes into elementary school saying she misplaced her homework?? me, obviously. but it worked and i felt better. she gave me another worksheet, and i redid it. case closed.

i’m telling you this story b/c i crack up when people change language to make things seem…not so bad. take “field mouse,” for example. now that we’ve dealt w/our fair share of mice, it always cracks me up when people see/find/catch a mouse in their house and tell people that it is/was just a little field mouse.

i used to go for the whole field mouse thing before i moved to a rowhouse that shares walls w/who knows what. but as a tried-and-true resident of southeast baltimore, i’m not falling for it anymore.

i hate to break it to you, but a mouse is a mouse, folks. just like a roach is a roach and not a “water bug.” the mice we occasional caught in picturesque suburban new jersey look exactly the same as the mice we catch here in downtown baltimore (well, except for the gang tattoos…).

if saying field mouse makes you feel better b/c it makes you feel like it came from a farm or is actually a talking cartoon mouse or just, you know, accidentally wound up in your house b/c it got sidetracked from the field it was crossing, so be it. but i say a mouse is a mouse is a mouse (even if it’s in an orange; see above). ugh, i can’t believe i ever had rodents (hamsters) as pets. of course i used to have lizards (ok, just chameleons), too. i also used to pick up worms. a lot has changed with me since the early/mid 80s.

as for the word “misplaced,” i don’t think i’ve used it since second grade. (if i ever go to england, maybe i’ll use it there. seems like a place where they’d use that word.) and i really don’t get many wedgies anymore either. in case you were wondering. which you probably weren’t. just saying.

i am apparently one of these when i'm sick. (my fave mug in our kitchen, btw. so funny, right??)

thanks, babe. thanks. i really appreciate that.

if you hadn’t already guessed, it was my lovely unlawfully-wedded partner who said that to me. only days ago. as i lay groaning in bed from a cold/flu type thing, which i undoubtedly must have caught in “room 618,” the room where they can ppl at my former place of work (i must give a shoutout to the ex-colleague/friend that pinpointed where we picked it up; she got it, too. HOLLA!)

so. apparently i’m a bad patient.

“you’re worse than a man!” holly says to me each and every time i get sick. [apparently men are bad patients? she was married before (yes, to a man, and yes, if she lets me i will tell you a little more about that in my book) so i guess she’d know.]

so yeah. i was sick. in case you were wondering where i was. which you probably weren’t. but still.

“you probably have swine flu,” my mom said casually to me over the phone on friday.

“mom, i don’t have swine flu,” i said.

“you might. i mean, you probably do. maybe just a mild case. but it’s probably the swine flu.”

a mild case of the swine flu. oh mom. mothers. you know? i know you know. (esp. if you have a jewish mother.)

anyhow, it knocked me flat on my ass from thursday afternoon til today, pretty much. but in a way, it felt kind of good. like, cleansing. like all the bad stuff that built up in me over the past miserable year and a half of my four-year stay at FPOE (former place of employment; i’ll just call it that from now on, much easier) just kind of exploded and now it’s over. it also gave me a chance–more like forced me–to take it easy. tho i like stopping to enjoy, say, a cup of coffee, i so rarely take it truly easy. nothing like a whopper of a cold to force you to slow the hell down.

one thing i started doing again (haven’t done this in a long long time) while i was sick–and something i will continue doing, i am happy to say–is read. i love reading memoirs. especially effed up druggie/rehab/bad childhood memoirs, probably b/c it makes me feel really really ok and normal. [i can thank augusten burroughs, author of “running w/scissors,” (bad bad childhood), “dry” (alcoholism/rehab) and “wolf at the table” (homicidal father; i read the entire thing on saturday) for my fascination w/these books.] now i’m onto “a million little pieces,” despite all the controvery re: it’s authenticity.

why am i telling you this? i’m telling you b/c as i was calmly, quietly (yes, i can be quiet. sometimes. anyway) reading “a million little pieces” last night (holly, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, was doing homework-type stuff; she’s back in school in case i never mentioned it), we heard a sound. a sound we became all too familiar with over the cold months. a sound that, when i heard it while holly was at school last semester, i swore i thought something was gonna pop outta the damn wall and hiss and bear its teeth at me.

we muted the tv. (we were listening to the radio or something) we heard it again. louder.

we looked at each other, wide-eyed. after a moment we looked at each other again and shrugged.

“it’s probably just a mouse,” i said. nothing we can’t handle. we’ve dealt w/this crap before. if you live in baltimore, esp. in a rowhouse where you share ancient walls with potentially filthy and/or ancient neighbors.

we put the tv back on. the noise started again.

“MUTE THE TEEVEE,” i said in my most loud jewish whisper (you know, the kind you reserve for synogauge when you’re talking about how short someone’s skirt is).

we listened. nothing again. the tv went back on. then we heard the sound louder than we have ever ever heard it. i didn’t need to tell holly to mute it again, she did it w/out me saying a word. we listened, paralyzed with fear. i’m telling you, you guys would have sh*t your pants. the noise came closer
and closer
and closer…

and then…

it SQUEAKED.

then we screamed.

“HONEY. HONEY OH MY G-D IT’S A RAT. HONEY IT’S A RAT!!!!”

“IT’S IN THE VENTILATION!” holly shouted.

“OH MY G-D!” i screamed back, while i turned off the entire hvac (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning) system. well more like i turned it off and then on and them off again while i screamed and jumped up and down and freaked the hell out and shook.

it scurried again some more and stopped.

it probably wasn’t a rat. it probably was a mouse. i mean, who the hell knows. they’ve got to sound louder when they’re in huge industrial-grade metal exposed hvac pipes. in any case, i’m tired of dealing w/this sh*t on our own. it’s time to bring in the big dogs. it’s time for a serious exterminator b/c i have had it.

i’ve pretty much had it w/everything lately. between the effing rats out back, the mice inside and out, the feral cats (we have caught quite a few; i’ll also leave that for the book) and, oh, i don’t know, witnessing a bunch of guys jump out of a car and kick the living sh*t out of some of our neighbors across the way (we called the police; unfortunately, this wasn’t the first or even the second time we’ve seen something like this go down late at night pretty much in front of our house), and the open-air drug market across the street, i don’t think either one of us is going to last much longer in this city. i’m really starting to lose my cool.

i just…we just. we need a break. you know? we need a goshdarn break.

altho, for the first time in my entire life, i had to skip rosh hashanah services (over the weekend) b/c i was so sick, i really do feel like we will somehow get a break this year (jewish, i.e. lunar, year) and things will get better.

“bad things come in threes, right?” my mom said over the phone last night when i called to tell her what was going on. “that’s what they say. and then things start getting better.” (tho i must say she doesn’t know the half of it. no one really does save for holly and i)

while we’re way past three (again, the book), i’ve got to hope so. in the meantime, i’m just glad i’m not a disgusting infectious “room 618” mess anymore. i have cleansed myself of my FPOE and i. am ready. to rumble.

doggone it! little black kitten that just plays and slinks around on the sidewalk outside their stoop. (it never runs away! how is this?!) i am not a fan of cats. if you’ve read this blog for a while you know this. (they crawl into our walls and ceilings, for example. or crap and/or spray all over our backyard, and yes, our roof, too.) i am not keen on drugdealers either. or neighborhood prostitutes. or the ppl that do/buy the drugs with or from or near said drugdealers/prostitutes. all of them are a real nuisance and make things…yeah, kind of dangerous around here and also threatening. so wouldn’t it just figure these loudass ppl would get a friggin kitten. and the worst part? the very worst part? it’s totally cute. dammit!

p.s. we went to south florida, land of jerry seinfeld’s fictional parents: early-bird specials, polo shirts, gold chains, white velcro dress shoes, condo assocations, the whole nine years. post on its way!

srsly. aren’t ppl living in cities, like, not supposed to come in contact with animals? as in: we go out to the country to look at animals from far away and giggle and gasp about how cute and fluffy they are? right? right? THEN WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO DEAL WITH SO MANY FRIGGIN ANIMALS IN THIS CITY???!!!

what’s w/the wildlife, huh, baltimore?? what the hell‘s with the wildlife? there are CATS sh*tting on our ROOF, ppl! our roof!! tell me how this is even possible? (i know. they’re climbers. but humor me here.) they use our backyard as a friggin litterbox. they. are in. our. WALLS! our walls!

the rats burrow under our gates. they even gnawed thr way thru the concrete as it was drying when we put in our patio. the mice, oh you know about the mice. oh and there’s dogs running loose, too. german shepards and pit bulls (that could easily–and very gladly, i’m sure–tear me apart). i’m telling you WHAT. i used to really like animals before i moved to baltimore. but now i’m srsly rethinking this, as the animals in this town are determined to ruin my life.

around 7/8 or 9pm most nights we hear some thumps and then some eery scratching in the ceiling, sometimes the walls. the first time this happened i was *alone*. holly was in class and i’m telling you i thought i was going to die. or lose my mind. or run out into the street (which would only have me running back in the house for a myriad of reasons). sometimes it gets so loud i think whatever it is is going to appear splat in the middle of the bamboo floor and start hissing at me. like, pop out from behind the fridge and gouge my eyeballs out. if you heard it i swear you’d feel the same way.

at first we thought that maybe it was a giant (gulp) rat. (oh G-d no. pls.) then i thought maybe it was a raccoon (we had a family of those suckers “move in” above our porch in nj when i was growing up) but we really don’t have those here. (the rats probably eat them. you think i’m joking? yeah, i’m totally not.) we don’t have squirrels in our hood, either. (again, the rats prob. scared them away. nothing fluffy and cute allowed in east baltimore.) we’ve decided it’s probably a cat. or cats. b/c i swear, just when i think i’ve seem *all* of them, i find a new one perched on our fence, skulking in our alley (tho i try to spend as little time as possible there since i was propositioned by a daytime (female) hooker who was smoking something in a metal pipe and asked me if i had a husband and what my name was. pls, i know, i know) or peering at me just under the roman shades covering our back french doors (and scaring the s**t outta me in the process).

i have alotta cat lover friends, so i’m going to try not to get too mean in describing my frustration w/these friggin felines. but i will say that i’m going to call animal control stat. if you know me and you’re reading this and want to adopt one, well c’mon on over! i’m sure if you hang around long enough (and are fast enough. those suckers can ruuun) you can grab one and take it on home. good luck w/that, tho. good friggin luck.